Sam Hardwick's web journal

I’ve been way too sick (terrible, horrible influenza, don’t recommend it for anyone) for a week for scanning, drawing or blogging, but I’ll just leave a brief prediction note here about the Egyptian protests before it’s too late. As I’ve previously noted, it’s suspiciously easy for people to choose sides in remote instances of unrest. Now everyone is on the side of the young, rights-demanding Egyptians who threaten to overthrow their government. My heart is, too, on their side, and I wish them the best of luck. However, my prediction is this: if they do succeed and Egypt undergoes a “regime change”, sooner or later the protesters will turn out to have been useful idiots for the islamists lying in wait. Sad face.

3 Comments on People like us #2

Would you choose a military dictatorship which isn’t the worst that we’ve seen over an opposition demanding democratic rights etc – with a certain possibility of islamists ending up in charge? You could sum up the stiuation in many countries in that part of the world with this.

Seriously, which would you choose? Which gives more “freedom” to citizens?

Hey, who am I to say? I just don’t know enough about Egypt, and it’s not my neck on the line anyway. I certainly in principle support people petitioning for rights. Which actual outcome can be expected to be better depends greatly on how likely islamism (or chaos, or a worse strongman) is to come out on top. In this case my (weak) hunch is that Egypt just doesn’t have the political maturity, demographics or class structure for it. So maybe this risk is so great that I’d take the military dictatorship for the time being.

Consider the Russian revolution: for a long time it looked like by far the better thing to happen, but ultimately in the long run of history we can see that it was a disaster. The American revolution was a violent reaction to a far lesser degree of oppression, but it came off wonderfully to the benefit of everyone. It’s just really hard to say.